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this weekend, KDE's annual conference will take place at Graz University of Technology in Austria with an AI-native desktop proposal is likely to divide attendees.
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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2026
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Fuck AI
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The response from the KDE's social media team to Gerard:
They make a fair point, but who platforms the speakers? If I proposed a talk about adding pornographic wallpapers to KDE, you know, just for the people who want to use it, would they platform me too?
Maybe if they were AI-generated you’d get some traction?
I think Child Porn is illegal there so you'd probably have to answer some questions from authorities after it was scheduled.
I heard that the courts ruled it's legal now as long as you generate it with AI first. I wish I was joking.
The event is at a uni in Austria, EU.
Oops sorry for the confusion, I misread the word "there" in your comment and you're right my reply doesn't really make sense in that context. I still think it's important for people to understand how fucked up that situation is though.
If it was new or may have interest, then yes.
There is a call for participation, a program committee for that year reviews submissions, and then score in categories like framework, plasma, applications, etc. The event producer role makes final calls.
A presentation on an idea is in no way to be considered a path forward for KDE. There have been tooling languages presented at akademy that will never be part of KDE, companies like Valve talked about how they've used KDE, and public sector groups have talked about KDE as part of migration efforts.
A talk is just a talk, meant to highlight unique topics. Akademy is not a planning conference.
David Gerard's response to that response:
In which KDE didn't bother to answer and proceeded to block David Gerard.
https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117276666726477078
Not a good look.
Ah, the good old "let's highjack a popular thing to promote AI" PR method!
In that same Mastodon thread:
Response from KDE account:
David Gerard said "KDE Conf just wants to talk about going full AI slop desktop".
So... where's the inaccuracy (let alone "deceit") in anything David Gerard said?
(Question not necessarily directed at squirrel. More rhetorical and directed at whoever wrote those comments on that official(?) KDE mastodon account.)
Well, there is a big difference between "someone submitted a talk about going full AI to the KDE conference" and "the KDE conference wants to have a talk about going full AI and this is probably what the leadership wants and is just looking to get rubber stamped".
Imagine if someone made a post called "I think the lemmy.world admins should sell out to Meta and make big money" and this was reported as "lemmy.world is debating selling out to Meta; this is probably what the admins wanted to do all along".
The core of the matter may be true but the way it's talked about is anything but accurate.
David Gerard never said anything about the leadership of KDE. And KDE is "talking" about whether to slop it up or not.
Yeah that shit doesn't fly when they locked the topic discussing a possible future AI policy. I think they already made up their mind and are manufacturing consent for a fully slopified KDE future.
That's a very uncharitable view of a mod locking down a heated discussion because they don't want to deal with it anymore. There's also KDE devs in that thread who are anti-AI, so I don't know why you're concluding they've 'made up their mind'.
With the way things are going right now in FOSS circles, KDE both allowing this talk at akademy, and locking down discussion critical of AI, I don't really have much capacity left for charitable interpretations of their actions. The discussion in the mailing list linked above also doesn't make me hopeful.
AI Psychosis effects everyone now
That's what's great with projects like KDE. They're run by programmers who can tell what this charlatan is pushing for is bullshit, not businessmen who would gobble all of those shiny empty promises up and drive their organization into the ground with it.